Great Western Coffee Shop

From Medical Express (https://medicalxpress.com/news/2019-02-electric-bikes-people-brain-boost.html)


Any of our members use electric cycles?   Any take them on the train?

Apparently they are more popular than regular bicycles in Holland now! (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/01/bike-country-n0-1-dutch-electric-record-numbers-e-bikes-netherlands)

More popular with whom?

I'm reminded of the joke about the bloke selling a loaf of bread and advertising it at the "popular price of £5.00". "That's not a popular price - that's extortion" says a potential customer.  "I like the price - it's popular with me" says the bloke selling the loaf.

Calculating on figures in the article. The Dutch cycle market it worth EUR1.2bn per year,  and 409,400 electric cycles were sold last year for over EUR2000 each.  That's a total of EUR818m.  The overall average cost for a cycle was EUR1207 making for total sales of 994,000 cycles of all types - if you take any the electric ones, that leaves you with 585,000 others (pedal only), each at EUR653 on average.  The article goes on to say the the EUR1207 figure quoted is up by EUR200 (over a period) and quotes an overall figure of EUR734 in 2011.

So - new cycles in numeric terms are still just 42% electric - but in cost terms they generate 68% of the income of those who sell them ... with who (for income reasons) I can appreciate them being more popular that push bikes.

Electrically assisted bikes are also very popular in Germany. There are two main types, the e-bike which is essentially an electric moped - that is it runs on battery power alone and one doesn't have to pedal - and the pedelec. The electric motor in the latter only assists the pedalling action - if one stops pedalling the electric assistance also stops.

If the e-bike can exceed a certain speed - I think it's 15kph - then the rider must have insurance like a moped. Equally the pedelec must not supply assistance if the speed is greater than than the 15?kph.

Both my wife an I have pedelecs which we bought in Germany six or seven years ago. Brilliant - essentially the motor support cancels out the headwind...!

Obviously they are slightly heavier than a normal bike but both fit a heavy duty bike carrier which locks onto the tow hitch of our car.

To be recommended.

Ebikes that supply power when the rider is not pedalling are not legal in UK (unless registered, insured, etc as an electric moped, of course – in which case the speed limit becomes 30mph not 15mph). There are plenty of them around of course, just as there are plenty of pedelecs which carry on supplying power at over 15mph. In fact the only electric bike users I know (both actually have trikes) have modified their cycles to operate on power without pedalling (one has a switch, the other has a throttle) for disability reasons (they both have mobility problems). Neither has altered the 15mph cut out though. (As a further factlet, I think switch or throttle power is legal in UK at walking speed, which has a legal definition for this purpose – not sure of the precise figure but it's around 3 or 4 mph. This is to assist low-speed manoeuvrability, such as through gates.)

I think a throttle on an ebike is OK as long as it adjust the power input to the motor (other bikes use a simple + or - to adjust power). This adjust the power of the electric motor from ‘no power’ up to ‘max’ or ‘turbo’ (on Bosch motors). However the point is that unless the rider turns the pedals and applies pressure the motor will not kick in. So, you ride easily along the flat with minimum power, or no power, and then come to a hill and you can add power so that YOU are putting in the same effort but the motor is helping too.

Taking electric bikes on trains is as ‘easy’ or ‘difficult’ as an ordinary bike. I have taken both a Brompton Electric folder and Gazelle ebikes and other full size ebikes on trains with little problems. However electric bikes are heavier than ordinary bikes and lifting them into HSTs etc can be challenging. Gazelle bikes don’t fit into Voyager cupboards so might be problematic on IETs. Class 150s, 158s and even Pacers aren’t much of a problem.

Yes. I was thinking of something different though, or two different things: a throttle that adjusts speed directly to the wheel, like a motorbike throttle, which is illegal but fairly common; and a "walk" button, which AIUI is legal.
Yes, that's how they're meant to work in British law. In most of Europe (I'm not sure about America and places) I think it's legal to have power without pedalling, as long as the motor cuts out at 25km/h. Again, it's common to see bikes like this in UK too, either grey imports or illegal home mods.

Hmmm, makes you really proud to live in Bristol! :(

https://www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/bristol-news/bristols-big-issue-bike-rental-7481316

Makes you wonder how the e-bikes that TfL have just introduce will fare.

I was quite surprised by that. I used to see a lot of damaged Yo bikes (the yellow ones) when that scheme was running, whereas never seen an obviously damaged or vandalised Bird bike. And the only reason I can think of that Bristol might have a much higher rate of vandalism is the availability of the docks – though I note they say more bikes are vandalised in Bristol than everywhere else they operate combined (in the world? Do they really have schemes outside Britain?) without giving any idea of the numbers available in each place.

Yes, so was I. 
I've yet to encounter my first vandalised Big Issue eBike but then again my haunts in Bristol are predominantly centred around the leafy burbs of Redland and surrounds.
I do wonder though, what it is that may make the eBikes more of a target than Voi eScooters.

Yes, I found myself wondering the same thing. Could it have anything to do with how they are managed? You often see Voi scooters being moved around, and in the morning they're in neat rows ready to start a new day. It's relatively rare to see one looking like it's been dumped. Or are they just more robust?

Do we actually know that they are more frequently vandalised than the scooters? Could it just be that it's "better management" in the sense that Voi predicted and allowed for a ~10% vandalism rate, so don't talk about it?

Going back to the bit of Graham's question about taking e-bikes on trains, TfL fairly quickly banned e-scooters (and e-unicycles, which I didn't know were a thing) on all its services after a couple of nasty cases of spontaneous combustion by poor quality batteries.  For reasons I'm not clear about, it seems that there is not the same perceived risk with e-bikes, but it would be a shame if circumstances led to the ban on e-scooters being extended to e-bikes, particularly as my wife's now got one as her arthritic knees became too much of a barrier to pedalling up steep hills. 

The increased opportunities for avoiding having to lift the bike at stations thanks to more lifts, slopes etc do make the extra weight of an e-bike less of a problem than it might have been.  We've entirely given up though taking a bike of any sort on long distance trains thanks to the hoops you have to jump through. I was fortunate to enjoy many years of taking a bike all over the country, from the time bikes stopped having to be paid for until the demise of the simplicity of the guard's van.

The batteries in e-bikes and e-scooters, and for that matter e-cars, use the same chemistry as the batteries in your phone and laptop. Phones and laptops aren't banned for two reasons: There are far too many of them, and they tend to be well made, with appropriate regulating circuitry, and therefore not burst into flames. The same is probably true of well made e-scooters and e-bikes, for instance those in the hire schemes, but unfortunately not true of every conversion kit and similar. Nor is it true of every domestic consumer item, which is the reason why you should only recharge them in the day and when you're in the house (so you can spot a fire before it gets too big).